


Real Boy

by wirewhite (cascadewaters)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 08:46:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2645588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cascadewaters/pseuds/wirewhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I loved you.  I love you still."  It was like sunrise at Malachite Point.</p><p>A/N:  Happy birthday, hun!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [always_angel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_angel/gifts).



Caleb yawned and stretched a bit before snuggling quickly back down into the warmth of his bed. His room was freezing! He knew that Derek had turned up the heat last night, but it felt like the furnace had shut off entirely sometime during the night. Well, at least this was a Saturday, so he didn’t actually have to get up at a certain time. Maybe Derek would even let him skip family breakfast and stay comfy in here. The room was cold, and he could so go for an electric blanket, but Rowan and Isaac were totally right about the sheets. 

 

He was so comfortable that he didn’t hear the man come in; he didn’t have a clue that anyone was there until the covers disappeared and strong arms surrounded and lifted him. Caleb rolled and then closed his eyes, shivering. It wasn’t the first time he’d been plucked out of bed like this. “Der,” he chuckled, “it’s cooooold in here! If you’re gonna go all possessive alpha wolfy on me, at least put a log on first!”

 

“Hmm… and does your brother go ‘all possessive alpha wolfy’ on you often?”

 

Caleb froze at the unexpected voice. It definitely wasn’t Derek’s… but it was familiar, in some way he couldn’t explain. It pulled at something deep in his gut. 

 

“Uh unh. You’re not doing this. Breathe for me, Pinocchio.” The voice was calm, soothing, but firm. Caleb hadn’t even realized that he wasn’t breathing until then, and when he started again, his breath came in hitched, and he found that he was crying. Pinocchio. No one ever called him that. No one had, in years. He hadn’t even remembered about that; Derek had had to tell him.

 

Caleb knew, just knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying to wiggle and twist around so that he could see. The man holding him chuckled. “Nope, not gonna work, short stack. But let’s… try…” He was moving but not going anywhere, and it sort of felt to Caleb like he was getting shorter for a couple of seconds, and then, “…this.” And the man turned and pulled the teenager backward, still against him, down onto the bed, covering both of them and settling into the still-warm spot. “Ah, much better, dontcha think?” And he lifted Caleb and flipped him like a baby, so that the boy was now looking straight down…

 

Dark hair, short on top, shorter on the sides, going kind of silver and a little careless. Shallow dimples, like Derek’s. Cora’s crooked smile. Laura’s jawline. And eyes… the same eyes he saw in the mirror every morning. 

 

“….Papa…?” Caleb barely whispered, unable to find enough air for more than that. 

 

And then Jeremy Silas Hale smiled, and it was like sunrise at Malachite’s Point. After a huge storm. On his birthday. “There’s my boy!” The strong arms contracted, and Caleb found himself, for the first time in more than thirteen years, hugged to his father’s chest. The boy had to work for it, but he dragged in a breath, and smelled… leather, and sandalwood, and peppermint, and black cherry, and sawdust. Caleb couldn’t help it—he sobbed, snuggling in and crying softly into the Cyclones Basketball sweatshirt under the open leather jacket. He cried, helpless, without even knowing why, and the man didn’t gripe or scold him or shush him or even say anything for a long time; Caleb just felt a strong hand rubbing big circles in his back, unhurried and unbothered by a teenage boy’s blubbering like a baby.

 

Caleb cried himself out, and then tentatively lifted his head, chewing his upper lip; he was afraid of what he’d see, but he couldn’t make himself not look. Jeremy looked back at him, not a trace of censorship or disgust in his eyes. He gave Caleb a soft smile—it was starting to seem to Caleb that everything about the man was soft, solid, but soft—and a long thumb came up to wipe away some stray tears from Caleb’s cheek. The boy smiled shyly, but then his smile crumbled. “Why are you here?”

 

Jeremy cocked his head. “Because my kids are here,” he answered simply.

 

“No, I mean, why are you… *here*? In here? With *me*? Don’t you wanna be with Derek, and Cora? The ones who… who know you?” He wasn’t sure why he was pressing the point when he *really* didn’t want to hear that he was right, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. 

 

Jeremy blinked, seeming puzzled. “Of course I want to be with them. I want to be with all of my babies, and last I checked, that includes you. I’ll spend time with your siblings, but right now, I’m right here, with my little Caleb Xander, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” He tilted his head closer to his boy’s. “I think you’re missing something here—you may not know me, but *I* know *you.* I waited for you for nine months; I was there when you were born—and I’ve got the scar to prove it; I held you and rocked you and changed you and played with you and bathed you and made sure that you ate actual food and didn’t eat any light bulbs or lick any electrical sockets. I read to you, I sang to you, I danced with you on my feet. I remember your favorite book and toy and song, what made you laugh and what made you cry. I remember how it felt when you tried to curl your toes around my finger, or pulled my ear, or bit my finger when you were teething. And I remember which teeth you got first.” He carded his fingers through Caleb’s hair. “I remember that you were the only one of mine born with hair, and it was flame-red for months, which was something *my* brother always teased *me* for when I was a kid; no one could figure out where I’d gotten a gene for red hair.” He rubbed at the back of Caleb’s neck, his other hand under his own head. “I made a lot of mistakes with you, and them, but I loved you. I love you still, and no power in the universe could ever change that.” 

 

Caleb melted into the broad chest. His heart raced, but even that felt soft. He was safe, at home, in his own bed, surrounded by warmth and supported by the reassuring solidity and love of a man he’d not even been able to imagine. “Love you, too,” he murmured. “’M I heavy? If you’re hot, I can move, give you some space.”

 

“Oh, no, no, don’t you dare,” Jeremy murmured soothingly and firmly. “Don’t you dare move away from me. I’ve been waiting years for this day. Here, got an idea.” He wrapped his arms around Caleb and turned them onto their sides, then released long enough to struggle out of the leather jacket, which he tossed carelessly behind him. Then he snaked his arms around Caleb again, tucking him in and gently bonking foreheads with him. Leaving their heads together, he whispered, “Do you know why I call you Pinocchio?” 

 

Caleb nodded and started to answer, but his father laid a tender finger across his lips. “Shhhh, short stack—let’s just whisper. This is just between us, okay? No one else needs to hear.” 

 

Caleb smiled tearfully at that, and nodded eagerly. When his father released his lips, he whispered, “Der told me. You called me Pinocchio ‘cause I was your ‘real boy.’ You knew I would never be a wolf, and you were okay with it,” he answered, awe filling his voice. “You were okay with me being just… this.”

 

“I wasn’t ‘okay’ with it, baby boy. I was *proud.* I love each of you just the way you are, and I don’t think that any one of you is more or better than any other. You’re not a wolf because you’re meant to be an amazing human, and you are, and you will be.” He nodded sideways. “Aaaaand it’s pretty cool to imagine you walking at the center of a big pack of wolves.” He grinned, and Caleb grinned back, every bit of him filled with warmth.

 

“Why at the center? Shouldn’t that be Derek?”

 

“Nope. He’s alpha—unless he needs to send a vanguard, he walks point. He puts himself into danger ahead of his betas and his human. That’s just how it works. Nope, some alphas would probably stick you in the very back, but I know Derek, he’d put you dead-center, so that you’re always surrounded by protectors. Your mama would’ve done the same.” He considered that. “Well, no, actually, your mama would have left a few packies behind with you, and not let you out in the first place, if everyone was shifting and going into something. And she wouldn’t have listened to any arguments about it.” 

 

“Sounds like Laura,” Caleb said with a sad smile, which Jeremy returned.

 

“So tell me about you. What has my little Caleb Xander been up to?”

 

And they spent hours that way, cuddling and whispering, sharing secrets and thoughts and snickers, and a few tears here and there. Caleb told his father all about basketball, and school, and what girls he liked. He sucked it up and told him about Maggie Porter and wrecking Laura’s car, and got only sympathy and reassurance in return. He found himself spilling all of his thoughts and feelings about Isaac, and Rowan, and Morgan, and Peter, and anything else that came to mind, and not once did his papa seem unhappy with him for how he felt. He wasn’t hungry, or thirsty, or cold—he was enveloped in warmth and he felt like a well-fed, well-loved puppy. When Caleb ran out of energy and things to whisper, Jeremy snugged his son into his chest and did some whispering of his own, about memories of Caleb, stuff about his own childhood, and how he’d felt being human in a den of wolves. He explained that he’d chosen not to take the bite, and that Talia had loved him enough to respect that even when it broke her heart. He showed him the scar from Talia’s claws as she’d gripped his arm during labor, and how he’d had a tattoo artist leave it showing but make it into part of a funky, old-fashioned key with gears and stuff at the head; Papa explained that he had a scar for each kid, and each of those scars was part of a different key to his ‘steampunk heart,’ which surrounded the scar Talia had given him the first time she’d lost control around him. And then, after several minutes of quiet, he started to hum, and then to sing, oh so softly, things that Caleb couldn’t remember ever hearing but felt that he *knew,* deep in his gut and bones. The boy drifted, feeling as much as listening to the music of his father’s voice and playing with his papa’s hand, toying gently with five of the six fingers and even putting their palms together to compare their hands. And he floated deeper, beyond sound and sight to that place of renewal, on the current of a voice he couldn’t know but somehow knew better than his own.


End file.
